Poker Tournament Formats

Looking to spice up your poker tournaments? Here are a list of some different ideas for your next game, most of them I have tried at least once. Give them a try, let me know how it goes, or tell me about your ideas. I'm not going to list different forms of poker, such as Hold'em, Omaha, Razz, Stud, HORSE or many other games that are all well documented on the web, and played at WSOP events. You can look elsewhere for those, I'm trying to offer something else.

Riverboat - Inspired by the movie Maverick, the idea is to split your group of players in tables of even number of players. For example, if you have 20 players, 4 tables of 5 would be ideal. Then each table plays until there is only one player left at each table. No merging of tables or sending players to another table for balance. The winners of each table play at the final table, until a champion is decided. This format can be adapted with a variety of other tournaments listed below.

Heads-up - Already fairly common, but worth mentioning. This can be done with any number of players, but 8 is the minimum I'd advise trying this with. Players are divided into pairs, each player plays until one person has all the chips. Winners advance until there is only one player remaining. See http://www.printyourbrackets.com/ for printable bracket structures of single or double elimination for almost any number of players.

Royal Rumble - Inspired by the WWE, this one probably works best for single-table tournaments, but could be applied to the final table of a larger tournament as well, or incorporated into a Riverboat structure. 2 players are randomly chosen to start play heads-up. Then, after a predetermined set period of time, another name is randomly chosen to enter play, and so on until all players had entered the game. The blinds only raise at a set time after the last player starts. The advantage to be chosen last could be negated by the likelihood that he will be the short-stack at the table.

Teams - Players are divided into teams, randomly or otherwise, and are assigned a point value based on their final position in the tournament. If you have more than one table, I'd recommend splitting up teammates to different tables. This one could work as a normal tournament style or as a Riverboat style.

Survivor - Based on the TV show, this is a very complicated format, but the one time I ran a tournament of this format, everyone agreed it was a lot of fun. The unique feature is that at a predetermined time (we did every 30 minutes) 1 player from each (tribe) table was randomly selected to go to Exile Island (a separate table). We only had 2 tables, so in this case the 2 players played heads-up, with an Immunity Idol on the line. Each player could chose to bring as much of their existing stack as they wanted to risk to Exile Island, without discussing it with their opponent. If one player was able to eliminate the other, the winner would get the Immunity Idol, and both players would return back to their initial table with the chips they had won/lost, unless they had brought everything with them, and lost.

The Immunity idol can then be used in a variety of ways, depending on how much power you want it to have. My initial idea was that the bearer of the idol could use it on the flop or turn to prevent any more community cards from appearing this hand. This would be especially helpful if the idol bearer flops a set, but wants to avoid seeing a flush card hit on the turn or river. They play the idol (which means they lose it) and all hands are revealed. Another possibility is that on the river, before hole cards are revealed, the idol bearer has the option to use the idol, and thus guaranteeing him that he gets back all money he invested in the pot. Several other possibilities exist, but it has to be powerful, as the idol is very hard to get, and can only be used once.

Bounty Hunter - There are several ways to run a bounty tournament, but I'll outline my favorite. You take a portion of the tournament buy-in (10% to 100% depending on what you like), and give everyone a special poker chip (or whatever) to signify their bounty. When you eliminate someone, you collect their bounty. When the tournament is over, you cash in all the bounty chips you collected for the value you determined before the tournament began. For example, if you have a $50 buy-in, and you set aside $10 for the bounties, the remaining $40 of every buy-in goes to the main pot, but the $10 left over goes in to the bounty pot. Remember, when you are eliminated, you give your opponent only your personal bounty, not all bounties you have collected.

Re-buy/Add-on - A great way to get more money in the game, and tons of options to customize, both Re-buy and Add-on can be used individually or together. Re-buy is simple, when a player gets eliminated, they have the option to re-buy into the tournament for the initial buy-in, getting the initial starting stack. This should be done immediately after that player is eliminated. Add-on is an option to pay a specified amount of money to get a specified amount of chips. There is a lot of flexibility with this rule. You can chose to have limits on one or both, or at specified times. This one in particular requires more effort from the Tournament Director.